The dark face, and the fair, were lifted, side by side, as they knelt
before the Madonna. For a while so motionless they kneeled, they might
have been finely-modelled figures; he, bronze; she, marble.
Then, with a sudden movement, she put out her right hand, and caught
his left.
Firmly his fingers closed over hers; but he drew no nearer.
Yet as they knelt thus with clasped hands, his pulsing life seemed to
flow through her, undoing, in one wild, sweet moment, the work of years
of fast and vigil.
"Ah, Hugh," she cried, suddenly, "spare me! Spare me! Tempt me not!"
Loosing her hand from his, she clasped both upon her breast.
The Knight rose, and stood beside her.
"Mora," he said, and his voice held a new tone, a tone of sadness and
solemnity; "far be it from me to tempt you. I will plead with you but
once again, in presence of our Lady and of the Holy Child; and, having
so done, I will say no more.
"I ask you to leave this place, which you would never have entered had
you known your lover was yours, and needing you. I ask you to keep
your plighted word to me, and to become my wife. If you refuse, I go,
returning not again. I leave you here, to kneel in peace, by night or
day, before the shrine of the Madonna. But--I bid you to remember, day
and night, that because of this which you have done, there can be no
Madonna in my home. No woman will ever sit beside my hearth, holding a
little child upon her knees.
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